


Safe from the Dark

by ChromiumHeart



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: And a Hug, Angst, Ben Solo needs his dad, Gen, Han Solo feels bad, Hurt, Millennium Falcon - Freeform, Nightmares, Past Love, Pre-TFA, failure - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 02:17:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13424616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChromiumHeart/pseuds/ChromiumHeart
Summary: An aging Han Solo is tortured by nightmares. He's unable to chase them away with all the whiskey in the world, and just when he thought it couldn't get any worse, his son is taken by the Dark Side.





	Safe from the Dark

Some nights were worse than others. He would pace the Falcon for hours, looking out at the vast expanse of nothingness in front of him. It made him realize how infinitesimal he really was. Those thoughts consumed him like a dark mass, wrapping around the brightest parts of him and smothering out the light. 

He had nightmares too frequently now, harkening back to the days where he thought he couldn't get enough adventure in his life. Chewbacca would hear his movements in his bunk, body shifting and sweating as he relived horrors he thought had long past. 

They didn't speak of it. 

The great Han Solo, having nightmares? It was absurd. 

But even with his faithful friend by his side all these years, the loneliness had never been so deafening. When he thought back to all he had and how quickly he seemed to lose it, it made his stomach churn and bile threaten to rise. How had he let it go so far? Where was there to go from here? 

Han was sure the answer would come to him; whether it was after a night of fitful unrest, or at the bottom of an expensive Corellian whiskey bottle. Chewie would drag his sorry ass back onto the Falcon after a night of one too many indulgences; sometimes with a bleeding lip or black eye. 

"I was a rebellion hero, a goddamn hero!" He would slur, grasping onto the Wookie's arm for balance. 

Chewie would just grumble and put him to bed as he always did. The only companion who never left him, faithfully by his side through it all. But still, desperation clung to the smuggler; a desperation for some kind of communication from Leia or Luke. A holovid would have been sufficient. 

Han tried to be the General for the Rebellion like Leia had wanted. He taught pilots everything he knew about fighting and evasive manoeuvres, even in a ship like the Falcon. The X-Wings were much more nimble, and with Han's guidance, they hadn't lost a space battle against pockets of the Empire in years. 

It had been a joyous occasion, too, when Leia announced her pregnancy; everyone doted on her including Han, putting aside that smugglers tough persona for something a little more fatherly. The baby had been given the name Ben, after Luke's old Jedi Master, and Han had never felt more complete in his life.

Pilots looked up to him like a father figure; he had Leia and Ben to go home to at night. Everything seemed perfect, until it wasn't. 

The fights came more frequently between them as Ben got older; Han felt stagnated by the Rebel Alliance and he yearned for the dangerous adventure that his old smuggling days had brought.

Once Leia told him to take the Falcon and get out. He did, flying furiously to the Outer Rim to clear his head, missing for days with no word home. Chewie had begged him to send a comm, at least to let them know he hadn't been picked up by someone on some kind of warrant. 

When he got back, Leia didn't want to speak to him and Ben had been shipped off to train in the Force with his uncle. Han thought it was probably better that he wasn't privy to that conversation because as far as he was concerned, the Force was something he was never going to understand. So Ben, his smiling, happy son was gone and Leia busied herself with the duties required of a General. 

He had asked for forgiveness a couple times after that, but the apologies were always haphazard and sometimes after he'd had one too many. She shrugged him off. 

As the time passed, Han began to realize that things were never going to be the same as they were when they met. Lives changed - Leia had unending responsibility that didn't involve listening to Han complain about how bored he was within Resistance walls. Eventually, even the pilots that used to look up to him realized how far the man had fallen. He was just an old man with nothing to show for himself but a career in smuggling and a child carted off at a young age to be led and reared by his brother in law instead of him. 

One night, he packed his bags without saying a word to anyone other than Chewbacca, climbed aboard the Falcon and left, not looking back. 

Smuggling jobs were easy to get especially in the Outer Rim, and picking up where he left off had been easier for Han than anything else he had done in the past several years. It made him feel young and adventurous again - like he wanted - not a life that Leia would approve of, but one that was his. 

Everyday he watched himself age further, he realized how much he missed home. Leia. Being a father. _Ben_. By now, his hair was mostly grey and his aging face showed his frown lines more prominently. Women still stole a glance at him once in a while, but he was too busy at the bottom of a bottle to notice. At least when he passed out he wouldn't dream. Wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night with perspiration causing his shirt to cling to him, his heart hammering in his chest and making him breathless. 

Still, with everything he had faced in all his years, nothing steeled his stomach and nerves more than when he received a desperate message from his love from long ago - 

Their son had been taken. The draw to the dark side had been too much to fight off - his son - had murdered Jedi and had absconded with a man known only as Snoke. Han shook with fear, his skin getting clammy. Luke had mentioned that he felt the pull to the Dark Side deep within Ben as the training went on, but Han didn't believe it. Ben was mischievous - not a murderer. But now he was gone, stolen away from him and kept under guard by a First Order menace. Brainwashed, probably. Tortured, maybe. 

His nightmares became more frequent, dreaming of how his son would look now, grown up. He would always be reaching for him, begging for his fathers help, but Han couldn't get to him. His legs would lock up or he would be held in place by an invisible force. He would scream but no sound would come out, and Ben would be left alone, sobbing. 

Han searched the galaxy for months for leads on Snoke, and where he might find him, but every lead proved futile. Sometimes he felt like he was close; like he could kick down a wall, shoot some troopers and whisk his son back home, but that day never came. 

But he never gave up the search. 

His nights were still filled with things of terror; after a year or two though, Ben seemed to stop calling for him to help. Now when he saw his son, he was hidden from him, consumed in a darkness that washed over him like an unyielding shadow. He would call to him but he had no voice. This place was cold. Empty and void except for him and Ben, but he never looked at him. He took slow steps, each one feeling heavier than the last in a desperate attempt to get to Ben. He held out his hand, so close to the billowing shadow he could nearly touch him - and then he was gone. 

With a startled waking breath, Han realized he was on the Falcon. He wiped an errant tear from his eye and settled back against the pillow with a shaky breath. 

_I'll see you again, Ben. Even if it is with my dying breath, I'll see you again and you'll know you are loved. I'll find you. One day._

Han repeated that mantra as sleep slowly reclaimed his aging body. That was his promise to his son. He would save him from the darkness, no matter what the cost.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and/or comments are amazing and very much loved. Please feel free to say hi or send me a fic request [on Tumblr](http://chromiumhearts.tumblr.com) as well, I would love to hear from you!


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